Mary Willard

WILLARD, GARDNER, SEIGFRED, KENDALL, GRANGER, STAMY, SHUMACK, ANDERSON

Posted By: Carrie Robertson (email)
Date: 10/18/2016 at 21:48:52

Thursday November 23, 1933 The Marion Sentinel
Funeral services were held Friday at the Yocom chapel, for Mrs. Mary G. Willard, 83, a former well-known Marion resident, who died Monday Nov. 13, at Ardmore, S.D., where she had made her home for a number of years. The Rev. J.M. Walters of the Methodist church, was in charge of services. Pall bearers were William P. Secrist, Ed. Sigfred, Karl Kendall, A.E. Granger, Dan Stamy and F.A. Shumack. Burial was at Oak Shade.
Mrs. Willard was the wife of John S. Willard, who at one time the county superintendent of schools. She came to Linn county as a small child in 1852. Surviving are two daughters Alice and Elsie Willard, of Hot Springs, S.D.
As Mary Gardner, daughter of William and Amanda Gardner, she was born April 29, 1850, at Kanvesville, Ill. With her parents she came to Linn county in 1852, where a home was built at the Corners in Clinton township. She was married January 12, 1870 to John S. Willard, who died Oct. 1, 1922.
The pioneer Gardners made friends of the Indians and induced them to do police work against the horse thieves, a menace of the time. This country was all prairie at that time, and the Gardners brought by wagon tree shrubs and slips, which resulted in orchard and groves in their new home. In this home the entire neighborhood gathered, and from it the first company of Civil war soldiers left to train for camp. Three members of her family had enlisted in this company. Later the neighborhood again gathered in the Gardner home to await the result of Lincoln's assassination. Mrs. Willard often said that during that time all spoke in low tones, the women with white aprons, wiping their eyes on the hem; the men sitting anxiously and reverently in groups, made a lasting impression upon the memory of the growing girl.
To the Gardner home was brought the second piano in the county and the first McCormick reaper. The piano was carted on a wagon box, covered with rag carpet, from Clinton. Its arrival meant a neighborhood gathering and the neighborhood witnessed the first trial of the reaper.
Following the war, the young men in the family moved to Carroll county. Mrs. Willard took the train with an old-fashioned Saratoga trunk. They met her with good-natured laughing at the amount of clothing she had brot [sic]. But, the trunk, when opened, proved to be filled with slips of willow, elm, maple and lilacs, and many sturdy groves in Carroll county are the results of that trip.
Mrs. Willard was a musician, studying in Miss Dillan's academy in Marion, and later in Cornell. She left Cornell to care for her niece, the late Gertrude Gardner Anderson.
Mrs. Willard was a great reader and traveled as much as her means and strength allowed. She had an alert mind and was interested in all general topics, and had a fine sense of humor.